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Thursday, 7 April 2016

I have spoken to SKDC and they tell me that everyone on the
waiting list for permits has been contacted now and permits have been issued.
They still have spare permits available for anyone who has missed out or moves
into the area. Let me know if you hear otherwise!

I am also keeping tabs on the review of the operation of the
scheme which SKDC will undertake shortly. They are waiting a while before commencing
this in order to capture the impact of the additional permits. I have not heard
of any particular issues arising since the additional permits were issued, but
please let me know if things have changed.

I am also keen to hear of any issues that need to be brought
to the council's attention. Thanks to earlier input from you all I was able to
provide the following list to SKDC for inclusion in the review.

Permit Waiting List

This has now been addressed, but
was the single biggest issue I heard about. If you do extend the zone
northwards the argument for limiting permits to 50% of the spaces becomes
weaker as these streets are almost exclusively used by residents.

Spaces outside the Town Hall

The spaces there used to be only
available for parking in the evenings (single yellow line) or a taxi rank on
Fridays. Use of these for parking during the day significantly restricts the
southbound flow of traffic at peak times, particularly as the lights are green
only for a short time. It may be possible to convert the time restricted bays
at the East end of Bath row to shared use if additional permit parking is
needed in an alternate location.

Star Lane

The signage for Friday use of this
bay as a Taxi Rank is not seen (or ignored) by many shoppers, particularly blue
badge holders. As a result the taxis don't really use this. Is this the best
place for the taxi rank?

St Paul's St

There are several problems here
that compound to make this street an issue, particularly after 6pm. Something
needs to be done here:

·Disabled bays near the Toby Norris are redundant
as more spaces are available to blue badge holders who use the double yellow
lines. Sadly, those who park half on double yellows and half in the bays get a
ticket.

·The loading bay outside M&S is often
unusable due to the blue badge parking on the double yellow lines on the other
side of the street. These often cause obstruction, particularly near the
corner, but CEOs are unable to issue penalties for obstruction - only the
police.

·When the M&S delivery lorry parks there it
uses the pavement to park (presumably to leave sufficient gap to cars parked on
the double yellow lines) - obstructing the pavement and also breaking it up. Is
the solution to put more bollards on the pavement and to use red lines instead
of yellow ones on the other side?

·In the evenings the single yellow line on the
south side of the street is used for parking. However cars also park on the
north side where they always used to. This means that there is sometimes not
enough room for the lorries to get down the road. The single yellow line also
permits parking opposite the end of Star Lane, often making it difficult for
turning traffic. Is the solution to swap the single and double yellows round?
Note the new houses being built may require changes to the location of the
disabled bays anyway.

St Leonard's St

It seems that this area is less
well visited by the CEOs and cars are parked for days at a time with no permit;
sometimes on double yellow lines; for example

·One case involved a car parked outside a
house for several days in order to sell it but displaying no permit
whatsoever.

·Another was a Range Rover parked for several
days on double yellow lines opposite a house and then moved to the other side
and parked for weeks on a one day visitor's permit showing the same date the
whole time.

Broad St

The original plan and
recommendation by SKDC was for the bay in Broad St to the East of Newgates to
be part of the scheme - in fact the latest letter you sent out advising of
suspension of the scheme for the fair still listed it as being inside the zone.
Can this be added back into the zone when you next undergo a TRO consultation?

Displacement Parking

The streets outside the North of
the Zone (New Cross Road, King St etc) are used by Residents inside the zone
who either have more than one car or have not been able to obtain a permit.
Extending the zone to include these roads may be necessary (but I think
increasing the number of permits will help significantly - you should be able
to see how many on the waiting list live in Conduit Rd / Vine St / Bentley St /
Recreation Ground Road). Scotgate, Rock Road and Adelaide Street are also
affected by displacement/workers parking and have requested that they are
included in the review.

Commuter Parking

The residents Church Lane /
Wothorpe Road are badly affected by rail commuters seeking free parking and
would like to have zone restrictions introduced.

Brownlow St

There is extensive use of the
grass verges to create parking spaces. These do not appear to be policed by the
CEOs.

Barn Hill

One of the bays is too short by
about 50cm to accommodate 2 cars. Can this be extended?

Business Permits

The fact that businesses have
permits that enables them to park causes adverse comments, particularly the
more residential streets (Barn Hill / St Mary's)

1 Permit per Household

I have had requests for this
limit to be removed as it causes difficulty in finding legitimate spaces for
those residents with more than one car. I have also had requests that it is not
changed as to do so would put even more pressure on the available spaces. Is a
solution to make significant residents' discounts available for the short and
long term car parks? Particularly Cattle Market which is not heavily used most
of the time.

If you have anything to add, please let me know.

Finally, I am aware of some residents who are regularly
swapping permits to enable them to park two cars within the zone. If you are
doing this I would love to hear more about your experiences of doing this.

Saturday, 29 November 2014

The scheme will operate in a similar way to the interim waivers in that the permit will exempt you from any time limits on the marked parking bays. However there are some important changes that you will need to be aware of:

Parking signs are being changed to include residents' permits but some details may change as LCC are taking the opportunity to standardise the parking restrictions

Broad Street is not in the residents' parking zone, but residents will still be eligible to but permits that can be used in other streets.

Parking restrictions will apply 7 days a week on all roads with the exception of Broad St.

Households will only be able to buy one permit (listing up to two cars)

You will be able to buy a book of 10 visitor permits for £15 - these can be used for visitors and tradesmen. Up to 10 books can be purchased.

Permits and visitor permits will be available from Maiden Lane. Proof of residence and that the car is registered at that address will also be required.

The scheme is designed around parking in 'dual use' bays - i.e. spaces can be used by residents, shoppers, visitors etc, but only cars displaying a permit will be able to stay beyond the 2 hour limit. Parking in Stamford is in short supply and so reserving spaces for the exclusive use of residents was not though to be workable by the council nor the residents campaigning for the parking scheme.

SKDC have approved the final details of the scheme, so
everything is set for the residents' parking to be effective from the start of next year.
All that is outstanding is for the on-street signage to change and for the
council to let us know how to get the permits (it looks like this will be from
their office in Maiden Lane).

Tuesday, 1 April 2014

With the interim waivers due to expire on 31 March, we have
been talking to SKDC to find out what is happening. They tell us:

·The scheme will now take a minimum of 25 weeks from
today (LCC’s timescale) to administer the various consultation and council
processes, so we won't see a scheme until Q4 this year at earliest.

·SKDC will Re-issue for free, the on-street
waivers and discounted car park tickets to existing holders, these will all
expire on 31st December 2014, or earlier if the scheme is adopted
sooner than that date.

·The price for anyone wanting to buy a waiver
will be reduced to reflect the fact that the remaining period is shorter (I
have no prices yet)

·Waivers and tickets with accompanying letters
will be mailed out today.

·A communication will be in the Mercury on
Friday.

While the delay is not great news, it does mean there will
be proper consultation for anyone living in streets where there will be new
parking restrictions (especially Vine St and Conduit Rd).

A number of you already have interim parking waivers, but if
you haven't you may be pleased to know that SKDC have reduced the price of
these to £58. These permits will allow you to park in any time-restricted
parking bays for as long as you want (except Broad St on Fridays).

Permits are available from the SKDC office in Maiden Lane after 1 April -
you will need to bring a utility bill and your V5c for any car you want to have on the permit to
prove that it is registered to an address in the proposed parking zone.
The interim parking waivers are valid until 31/12/14 or the introduction
of a residents' parking scheme (if earlier).

This should be very welcome news to anyone who has recently
moved into the centre of Stamford, or didn't buy a waiver when they first
became available in 2012. The latest proposed parking zone that I have is
attached.

Anyone who has an interim waiver or discounted season ticket
for the car parks should already have received replacements in the post.

A copy of the latest prosed zone:

Red areas are SKDC car parks, the yellow area is the part of Broad St outside the zone and red lines are proposed changes to existing parking restrictions.

Wednesday, 27 November 2013

While there has not been a lot to update everyone on, the council officers have been busy working up a
residents’ parking scheme, in discussion with the residents' action group. The good news is that we have now seen the proposed
Residents’ Parking Scheme that goes to the SKDC cabinet for approval on 2
December 2013. The key points are:

·A permit will allow you to stay in the time
restricted bays in the Scheme Zone Mon-Sun, without restriction

·There will be a single Scheme Zone for
Stamford rather than the 5 initially proposed.

·You can have one permit per household, but up to
4 cars listed on it – Cost £50 pa

·Books of 10 visitor day permits will be
available as well (with or without a permit) – Cost £15

·Businesses can also use the scheme

·The Scheme Zone extended from the earlier
proposal to include Barnack Rd, but excludes Gresley Drive

·The Scheme Zone excludes Short/Long Term Parks,
part of Bath Row and part of Broad St

·Only cars and bikes will be eligible – permits
will not be available for trailers, caravans or vans

·The new scheme should be in place before the
current permits expire (31 March 2014)

·The scheme can be applied District-wide

It still needs to be approved and implemented, but it looks
like SKDC have listened to what we have been saying to them, which is a result
for residents as well as businesses and visitors to Stamford.

Wednesday, 6 March 2013

It is not good news as it shows that there was not enough
support to proceed with a scheme in any of the zones. Even when they looked at
the results on an individual street level there were too few people willing to
pay for a scheme to make it work economically.

We are very disappointed that
SKDC deemed the scheme did not meet its specific criteria, but not totally
surprised given:

the increase in size of the zones consulted, and

people who did not respond were assumed to be against the proposal

this stacked the outcome against
us.

We have asked SKDC for the
detailed results, but we have not yet seen them.

This does not remove the issue
for residents; indeed there are individual streets where the majority are in
favour of a scheme. SKDC have decided these are too small to be cost effective,
but not said anything about what they intend to do instead.

We now need SKDC and LCC to
reconsider our original proposal - a waiver exempting residents from the 1 and
2 hour restrictions. This has the advantage of being much simpler (and cheaper)
to implement. The temporary arrangement already in place shows that this is
legally possible and, as these are already in use, do not impact materially on
the available parking. We would like SKDC to show their support in making this
happen.

We would also like clarification
from SKDC about what they are doing for residents in their off-street car
parks. Why can’t this be done for free, as in Bourne?

The only ‘good’ news is that SKDC have confirmed that the season
tickets and waivers will last until at least the end of May.

Our best action now is for everyone to let our LCC
councillors know what we want: